


tsunamis, typhoons, deep wells and shallow ponds

by a_good_soldier



Series: Going to California (Post-series SPN fics) [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dean Winchester Has Abandonment Issues, Emotional Constipation, Episode: s15e18 Despair, Fix-It, Getting Together, M/M, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27979161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_good_soldier/pseuds/a_good_soldier
Summary: Dean and Cas get together. That's literally it.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Series: Going to California (Post-series SPN fics) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2048791
Comments: 11
Kudos: 225





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> as always, over on tumblr [@without-quarter](https://without-quarter.tumblr.com)

When Dean tried to have this conversation with Sam, in the immediate aftermath of Cas’s death, it went about as spectacularly awful as you probably could’ve expected. He’d said, _You know, uh— I mean. Cas—_ and then, after a too-generous pause, Sam had said, _Yeah, of course I know. But it might do you some good to say it_. But the problem was, of course, that Cas hadn’t been— hadn’t _been_ , and so there was no justice in reproducing the very fact of his absence, in confirming it by saying anything at all. Why talk about Cas’s death, Cas’s life, Dean’s feelings and his wasted humanity, when none of it could bring him back?

So Dean had said, _There’s nothing to say_ , and that had been that.

This time around, once Jack has fixed the hole in the world and Dean has decided to make a break for what he wants, Dean comes prepared with a game plan. He slides two fingers of whiskey over to Cas from across the table. He makes sure Sam is in bed, or at least, not gonna interrupt them in the library anytime soon. He turns off the fluorescents so it’s just him and Cas and the warm lamplight between them.

And then — because he’s an old dog and, well, new tricks, etc. etc. — Dean tries, “You know, uh. Aha.”

After that he can’t make his stupid burden of a mouth say anything else at all.

Once a normal, not too generous, beat has passed, Cas says, “Dean,” his voice dry as anything, dry as New Mexico in the summer. He says, “I can’t possibly know all the intricacies of your mind.”

“Yeah, uh. Right.” Dean smiles, gives him that one, because it’s real hard to come back from anything Cas says in that tone of his. “But. You, uh.”

Cas sips his whiskey.

“Right.” Dean swallows his drink down. “What you said, about love, when you— the Empty, and what you said, is what I’m. Trying to talk about.” Jesus _Christ_. You’d think he’d have gotten better at this, after Sam prodding him into talking his shit out for their whole lives, not to mention that long and dreamlike year with Lisa where he learned how to be a person again, but Dean still finds articulating anything that’s not the component parts of a sawed-off shotgun harder than getting witches out of a ballet school, Christ.

Cas sighs. Dean doesn't see it, though, because he’s too busy looking at his own hands, wondering if they can make his vocal cords work the way they’re supposed to. “You know I don’t expect anything from you, Dean,” Cas says, softly, like that’ll take the sting out of it.

Dean knows, he _knows_ Cas just means that he doesn’t expect Dean to— to return his feelings, but fuck, doesn’t Cas know that he’s allowed to expect things from Dean? That he’s allowed to ask for things, allowed to want? And Dean thinks, deep in the core of him, the way he thinks the things that are so true he can’t face ‘em, that maybe he wants to be the kind of person you can expect things from. Someone reliable.

He looks up and sees Cas with that same, that last, expression on his face, the one Dean’s always gonna have burned behind his eyes. _Happiness isn’t in the having_ , Jesus God, Dean’s gonna have a fucking panic attack.

“I’m so glad you’re alive, man,” Dean says hoarsely, because he can’t say anything else, but at least he can say this. He keeps his eyes on the table, where it’s safe. He says, quietly, “You know I feel the same. About you, I mean. You gotta— Cas, man, you gotta know—”

“Dean.” Cas sounds— strangled, choked up. Dean looks up. Cas is— there’s nothing he can compare it to, just Cas’s mouth in that smile of his and his eyes lit up like there’s nothing else in the world but here, right now. “How could I have known?”

“I tried,” Dean says, rasps, his voice tripping out of his body like it’s three sheets to the wind, “Cas— every time I wanted you here, you gotta know, man, you know I don’t, I don’t say shit— I don’t _say_ shit, but you gotta know—”

Cas stands up abruptly, but before Dean can really work himself up into a crisis over it, he walks around the table to pull Dean up into a hug. “I did know that you cared for me,” Cas says into Dean’s shoulder. “I _do_ know. Your love for your family shines out of you like a beacon. Of course I knew that you loved me.”

“Good,” Dean grits out, helpless to the tears because his life is a soap opera now, apparently. Cas is warm under him, his sweatshirt clean and soft under Dean’s palms. “God, Cas. _Cas._ ”

“Dean,” Cas rumbles, and like always, like every time, it’s heavier than his name has sounded in anyone else’s mouth.

“The way,” Dean starts, tongue dry in his mouth, eyes closed because maybe it’ll be easier like this. Fuck. “When you said it. The way you meant it. It’s— it’s like that for me, too.”

Cas’s arms tighten around him, close and strong but fragile, too, like he could fall apart. Dean tries not to remember that he tends to have that effect on the people he cares about.

“I love you,” Cas says again. It hits Dean that they’re old, now. The kind of people who kids might look at on the street and expect to have their shit together. 

So, in deference to the imaginary teenagers eyeing him at the hypothetical grocery store, Dean screws his courage to the sticking pole and says, “I love you, too, Cas.”

Cas pulls back to smile at him. Dean looks at him — looks at that smile, beautiful, reverent, so close to his own, heat rushing the back of his neck like he’s a teenager again — and it’s enough. Oh God, for a man like Dean who deserves less than he takes, just this is enough.


	2. Chapter 2

The Dean and Cas situation is well on its way to hitting a breaking point. Dean knows it, Cas knows it, hell, probably Sam knows it. Dean’s climbing up the walls, but he’s not sure how to bridge the gap between _exchanging I love yous_ and _waking up in bed together_. Which sounds stupid when he puts it that way.

Still. Having to— having to _ask_ — and Cas just wants to be asked, Dean knows it, all right, but he can’t make himself form the words. And Cas deserves better than to guess.

It probably would’ve kept on that way for a good long while if Dean hadn’t seen _it_ a few days after he’d accosted Cas with his two fingers of whiskey and emotional illiteracy. He’d been wandering around the library, cleaning, being a general housewife of a man and trying not to think about it, when he’d come across it. The thing.

The poem.

At first, Dean thinks it’s something Sam’s reading. He reads, _like freedom, the ocean is easy to swallow and hard to spit out_ , and snorts, getting ready to bully Sam over it.

The rest of it makes him stop, though. It’s not something he’d usually go for — he’s more of a moving picture type, and when he lets himself admit that reading’s fun, too, he’s more of a prose man — but the poem is, uh. He swallows as he re-reads the last few lines: _tsunamis, typhoons, deep wells and shallow ponds,_ / _floodwater always lets go its acquaintances and holds tight its lovers_ / _how desperate I am for the levee to break._

The paper looks like it came out of a journal or something, but not like it was torn — more like the binding was worn out from being cracked open too many times. Dean wonders who wrote it. If some 1930s Man of Letters was scribbling down poetry in his off hours. It’s a weird image, but also kinda fits their weird academic jackoff vibe.

“Dean,” Cas says from behind him. Dean turns around, the paper in his hands, and Cas’s eyes narrow on it. “Ah. You’re… reading.”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” Dean laughs, looking down to the page in his hands. He turns it over; nothing on the back. He wonders if there’s more where this came from. “I found this, uh… well, anyway. Just some scrap paper lying around.”

“Yes,” Cas says casually. “Do you— I can throw it out for you, if you’d like.”

Dean’s fingers tighten unconsciously. He’s— he doesn’t know why, but he’s _attached_ to this stupid poem. Maybe because of the (obviously unintentional) Led Zeppelin reference at the end there, or maybe because he found it, and it’s his. “It’s. I mean, I don’t hate it.” And then he realizes he called it _scrap paper_ and adds, “I mean, it’s a poem.”

“Yes,” Cas repeats, swallowing. Dean looks up and notices he has a notebook in his hands. “That’s— interesting.”

Dean blinks. He wonders— but no. But. “Is this—”

“What do you mean?” Cas asks, too quickly, and Dean sets the paper on the table like it’s burning him, because it _is_. This is— Dean’s no English major, true enough, but even he can tell what this is. It’s a _love poem_.

Cas winces as it happens. “You’ve… I see that you’ve realized what that is.”

“You’re writing _love poems_?” Dean chokes out, because he— he thought he had _time_. He thought maybe he’d give it another few weeks of putting Cas in the passenger seat of his car and making him breakfast in the mornings and giving him a robe and driving him to nurseries to get too many goddamn succulents and then maybe, maybe, he’d get his shit together enough to say _so about that time when you said I love you, again, and I said it back, and we hugged it out, do you think that might also mean you might also possibly want to get naked together_ — but here Cas is, already off writing fucking _love poems_. In a _notebook_. With a _pen_.

Cas eyes Dean like he’s a predator and then, quick as a flash, darts in to snatch the paper away. Dean feels oddly bereft. “You don’t have to look so offended,” Cas says darkly, slotting the paper protectively into his notebook. “You— you knew this already. We _talked_ about this.”

“What—” wheezes Dean, because Cas is about ten thousand miles ahead of him right now. “What? We didn’t talk about— about _love poems_ , Cas, what the hell are you talking about?”

“It was an accident,” Cas says, and oh God, he sounds— he sounds like he’s _begging_ , “and you can’t fault me for— I wouldn’t have just left it out, this wasn’t a— a _ploy_ — Dean, you must understand—”

“I’m not—” Dean feels crazy. He feels like he’s had too much coffee, except times five. Maybe this is what ODing on Adderall feels like. “I’m not mad about the poems, what— what the fuck are you talking about—”

“What are _you_ talking about?” Cas snaps. “I walk in to find you reading one of my poems and having a nervous breakdown about it, so excuse me for wanting to reassure you that just because I wrote it doesn’t mean I plan to _do_ anything about it.”

Dean breathes in, hard, so deep it feels more like he’s trying to shove oxygen down into his throat. “Who,” he whispers, even though he absolutely already knows the answer. “Who’s it about?”

Cas tilts his head to the side, and then his brow furrows. “Dean. Are you fucking serious?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know, Cas, I’m—” _fucked up about it_ , he thinks, but can’t say.

Cas sighs. “Sometimes, I really, really question my own taste, Dean Winchester,” he says, and then he walks over to Dean, and he puts his hand on Dean’s as though touch like this is something Dean is allowed to get used to. “I’m in love with you,” Cas murmurs, and Dean shudders. He doesn’t know how to take this. “You know I’ve been in love with you for a long time. Don’t do me the disservice of pretending otherwise.”

Dean looks away, focusing on the table under him and, against his own wishes, the feeling of Cas’s warm palm settled on the back of his hand.

“Me, too,” he says, softly. “I said it, right. You know I— it’s the same for me.”

“So then why—” Cas pushes the poem into Dean’s face. “Why is this such a big deal?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, I’m just—” Dean shakes his head, tries to get a hold of himself. “I’m stupid. This is stupid.”

“It’s not stupid, it’s—” Cas closes his eyes. “I’m not trying to push you. That’s the last thing I want.”

“That why you haven’t moved into my room yet?” Dean asks, mortifyingly. He has no fucking control over his mouth.

Cas blinks.

“I mean,” Dean scrambles, “you don’t have to— I don’t _want_ that, I’m not trying to—” Except he does want that, and both of them know it now, oh Christ—

“How should I know?” Cas says, tossing his notebook on the table as he steps forward, still slinking even as a human, brutal, cutting, like the first day they met. “If you don’t ask me for things, how am I supposed to know that you want them?”

“Well, uh,” Dean says, and he stops. Not because he doesn’t know what to say, but because he knows _exactly_ what he’s going to say, and he doesn't know if it’s worth it. But, hell. If he’s going to— if he’s going to be in this, he should get the fuck over himself.

So Dean says, “If I ask you for something, and you give it to me, how am I supposed to know you’re not just giving it to me to make me happy, huh? How do I know it’s— it’s what you want?”

In the pause that follows, Dean waits for Cas to leave, for the ground to swallow him up, for the skies to fall open. He knows that’s not how normal people think. Normal people can just say what they want. They can just say things like, _I’d like to get dinner with you_ , or, _Do you want to try it with me on top, this time?_ , or, _Will you marry me?_ , or, _I just want you, whatever way you’ll have me, every other Saturday night or 24/7, only in your room or only in mine or everywhere in between, in the back of my car or in a goddamn church, anything at all_ —

Cas’s hand is hot on his face, thumb brushing the skin under his eyes. Dean blinks his eyes open, because he’d closed them, apparently. “You can trust me to say no to you, Dean,” Cas says. “And you can trust me when I say that the only thing I want is to be with you. Everything else is details.”

“Oh,” Dean whispers, feeling like a Nicholas Sparks protagonist. That is to say, weak in the knees. “Okay.”

“I’d like to kiss you now,” Cas says, so close now. “I don’t want to push you, but it’s what I want. You can always say no to me, too, Dean.”

“Yeah, okay,” Dean says hoarsely, “I— yeah. Yes. Please.”

Cas gives him a smile, one of those little grins up in the corner of his mouth, easy, soft, sweet like anything, and he finally — oh Christ — finally kisses Dean.

And Dean kisses back.


End file.
